Today, “academic” or “serious” electroacoustic music seems to be reaching maturity. It is moving away from purely technological research, from adapting to — and hijacking — tools (first the analog ones, then software) and instruments. It is also moving away from the sole concern of sound, both in description (Pierre Schaeffer’s treatise on sound objects) and analysis (formants, spectrum), and in its various synthesis and transformation techniques. Like all other music today, acousmatic music is more concerned with issues of writing, language, and, in the case of this work, expressivity. This is because acousmatic music, by its very nature fixed on a memory support, is freed more than any other from the technological issues often tied to interactive relations with acoustic instruments or real-time.

Is it because it is the signature, the audible trace by which each living being identifies itself and by which it marks others and detects their intentions? The voice remains the prime emotional and musical vehicle. It is the ancestral medium of all direct communication.

Vox Alia (1992-2024) is a cycle of five pieces which, through electroacoustic processing, retain traces of the melodic, rhythmic, and timbral qualities of this marvelous medium, in the service of a character, an affect, a collective ritual, an emotional or spiritual or anthropomorphic expression among others. The spatial writing of sound sequences plays an essential role in reinforcing the desired expression and clarifying polyphonies.

Moreover, the first work in the cycle, Vox Alia I — Affetti (1992-2000), itself in five movements, validated the expressive capabilities of multiphonic space before I went on to compose the acousmatic opera Yawar Fiesta (2006-12).

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Premiere

• October 20, 2024, Premiere of the complete cycle: L’Espace du son 2024: Annette Vande Gorne: Vox Alia, Théâtre Marni, Brussels (Belgium)